Huawei announce the Ascend P2 at Mobile World Congress

Huawei has kicked off the press announcements for Mobile World Congress with an announcement of their new Ascend P2. The new phone is running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean but skinned with the Emotion UI that we’ve heard about previously, an unfortunate step in terms of going away from the mostly stock interface that they have enjoyed previously.

Hardware wise the phone is fairly decent however the Huawei has bucked the trend of most manufacturers with the Ascend P2 by supplying the phone with a screen that isn’t a 1080P resolution instead going for a 4.7″ 1280×720 resolution ‘Infinity Pool’ IPS display. Huawei is also advising that the 1.5GHz quad-core processor inside the P2 makes it the “the world’s fastest smartphone”. The P2 will come with 1GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage but no microSD card slot.

The Ascend P2 also goes with an interesting choice not often seen these days, the 13MP Rear Camera is paired with a hardware camera button and the camera offers HDR on both still shots as well as the 1080P Video recordings. The P2 also comes with a 1.2MP Front Facing camera for all your video conferencing requirements.

All the standard wireless connectivity will be included – 3G with HSPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and NFC with Huawei also promising LTE support with 150 Mbps connections which will make it the fastest speed seen on a smartphone so far. These higher speeds will only be compatible with certain mobile operators networks with Orange France the only operator mentioned at the event, so no doubt we’ll hear more about this if this compatability is available on our LTE Networks here.

At the launch, Huawei advised that the Ascend P2 will launch globally in Q2 this year. We’ve approached Huawei Australia regarding availability of the Huawei Ascend P2, they’ve advised that there is no local launch info as yet but they’ll keep us advised.

Daniel Tyson Editor

Dan is a die-hard Android fan. Some might even call him a lunatic. He's been an Android user since Android was a thing, and if there's a phone that's run Android, chances are he owns it (his Nexus collection is second-to-none) or has used it.

Dan's dedication to Ausdroid is without question, and he has represented us at some of the biggest international events in our industry including Google I/O, Mobile World Congress, CES and IFA.